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The Great Quarantino

by Buck AE Down

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1.
The phony kings and the vicars The chairmen of the bored The middle management civil servants Where the grapes of wrath are stored All the shallow state hookers With accounts in arrears Couldn’t put this bullshit back If you gave them a million years Over and over Scary go round Flattening the ashes into the ground The pale-faced nepotism Barely out of his teens Spouting business jargon in the idiocracy All the secret servants All the cops on the take All the morally flexible Paid to look the other way Over and over Scary go round Flattening the flowers into the ground All the foreign ward heelers Drag it out in appeals All the beneficiaries Of your shady backroom deals All of your children Showing up with receipts The black spot you thought you caught Gonna take back all these streets
2.
Give my best To the dark unrest When the shadow falls Deep inside your chest When the pigs come back And kick us out again Lord, give me the strength of a thousand fragile men Give me all you lonely lost Your fever felled Your tempest-tossed Give me Korea Give me Vietnam Give me Afghanistan before its gone Hash pipe bombs And soccer moms explode Midlife crisis actors In the road You can keep your trophy wife Your money or your life And the lawyer’s kids will move to bigger homes Someone’s always keeping score While someone walks the dogs of war Who’s gonna keep these philistines at bay? Who let all this darkness see the day? Alt-Right punks in gaberdine All hide behind a glowing screen While toxic gas is filling up the space Never read the comment section anyway Movie bombs And SoundCloud songs explode Iridescent green and glitter gold We tried to make it fit But I just don’t hear a hit And the publicists will move to bigger homes.
3.
The cold of distant suns That died before our earth was born Now makes the canopy of stars Storms and hurricanes The weapons of the wars we wage Were all named for the girls that broke our hearts Trapped on a plane Careening through the driving rain Palpitating through each lurch and drop It’s not the fall That will be the thing that kills us all It will be the violence of the sudden stop These were the days That mediocrity held sway While armored police chase us round the block And it’s a shame Listening is not the same As waiting for a place in which to talk The bus blew past my stop Oh driver Let these pilgrims off
4.
They say you never saw it coming But it’s been waiting right outside your door All this time you thought you were good You were just lucky for sure You can’t go into the details And now you can’t go into town Stay six feet apart Of six feet under the ground (Chorus) Get it together While yr going to pieces Get it together When we’re better apart Get it together While ya got a good reason But don’t go too far You couldn’t just pay attention Now someone else will pay the price What you thought was blowing off steam Was really blowing on dice You’re just a preexisting condition A terminal and chronic disease The need for everything that you want Has brought the world to its knees (Chorus) The system that they can’t stop forgiving Has got a neck under its knee Some of us have got to speak up For everyone that can’t breathe
5.
I wanna be Leonard Cohen I want to be your man I want to spend the summer singing like Joe Strummer On tour with a rock n roll band I wanna be Brian Eno I wanna be Liz Phair Demos on cassette riding in the warm jets Supernova glowing over Times Square This is the moment we’ve been training for This is go time Pack yr bags and meet me at the studio door I wanna be Moe Tucker I wanna be Lou reed I want to keep you dancing like David Johansson Dancing backwards with the Lone Star Queen I wanna be Black Francis I wanna be Kim Deal On a wave of mutilation and the teenage adulation Writing gospels on a reel to reel This is the moment we’ve been training for This is go time Pack yr bags and meet me at the studio door I wanna be Kim Gordon I wanna be Thurston Moore I wanna hear my tunes filling up the whole room Through the speaker in the grocery store I wanna be Tom Verlaine I wanna be Richard Hell On a marquee moon jumping over the spoon Blasting louder than a ringing bell This is the moment we’ve been training for This is punk rock time Pack yr bags and meet me at the studio door
6.
Conspiracy news For the red, whites and blues You can’t have the circus Without all the rubes The midway is packed And so are the pews Endlessly Manifesting destiny From the medicine show To the star belly sneech One mans close magic Is another man’s deceit One man’s starvation Is another’s red meat Endlessly Privilege and jealousy Quarentino puts on a cape With the crowd at the foot of the stage Blowing all their minimum wage On this superficial form of escape Wondering “How did we get here?” The soothing all American trick Is the thing that's making half of us sick From the fair in San Bernardino To the federal bank casinos No one did it better than the Great Quarantino They all swear its true It may be ludicrous To think we’re better than this
7.
Some days are diamonds Some days are rocks Some doors are open Some roads are blocked Sundowns are golden Then fade away But if I never do nothing I’m coming back someday (chorus) ‘Cause you got a heart so big It could crush this town And I can’t hold out forever Even walls fall down All around your island There’s a barricade It keeps out the danger Holds in the pain Sometimes you’re happy And sometimes you cry Half of me is ocean Half of me is sky (chorus) And some things are over Some things go on Part of me you carry And part of me is gone
8.
Rip City Dub 04:55
Tin soldiers and ICE is coming We’re probably on our own This summer I hear the calling Tear gas on American roads Rubber bullet to the head Pepper to yr chest Blinded by the flash bang pop Mercenary hands In the unmarked vans Camouflaged government cops There’s gonna be A riot here Tin soldiers and Chad Wolf’s coming 50 long days and no end in sight The flash of sirens and the sound of drums Military choppers in the Rip City night Everybody’s out of work The moms in yellow shirts The medics pouring milk into yr eyes The ringing in your head Democracy is dead But its not going out without a fight
9.
Deep in the slumber Of an American dream Nothing you were promised Was at all what it seemed When the truth was uncovered Behind the barbed wire You woke up to discover Everything was on fire The time is soon coming To answer the bell Will you be the one running Or be the one at the well Will you be the one flying When they crack open the sky Or will you be the one on the ground Falling flat over all your own lies If you wondered who you’d be During history’s plow Well I’ll give you a hint Because you’re doing it now The whole world is watching So you better pick a side In the garden of sorrow Everyone in the sun All of the time
10.
The sun’s barely risen on the eastern shore states As the septuagenarian infant awakes Crafting the poison the whole nation takes On his telephone. Clothed in his crapulence, he climbs down the stairs The sycophants and lackeys will all fight for air As the oxygen sucks from the room with the glare Of an autocrat His face is a death mask of smugness and glib Like a roman emperor who just took a shit On the face of a nation and then walked away from it On the white House lawn wiping his ass raw with history’s pages The desert concentration camps full of cages Of infants and toddlers while the population rages Into a void you’ll be known by your works, and your works look to me Like the functions of a heart that's as black as the sea In the deepest dark trenches where nothing can breathe And the fishes all need lights on their heads just to see You’re a racist You’re a bigot You’re a liar You’re a shill You poison the air You poisoned the well You violate our ethics Our morals Our trust We’ll see you in November Sincerely, ALL OF US

about

Quarantino is america, or maybe America is Quarantino. At this point they have disappeared into each other like the illusion that they both are, and both desperately want you to believe. They are magicians each in their own way in search of a more impressionable class of rube.
* * * * * * * * * *
How will we explain this to people 20 or 30 years from now? How will we convey the visceral terror of knowing that you and everyone around you existed as potential walking viral landmine that could go off at any minute, slowly taking out an untold amount of people with you, beginning with those closest to you? It’s was a heavy trip, and suffice to say - no one was ready for it, and we certainly didn’t get better at it as time went on.

As of this writing - the COVID 19 pandemic is still raging. Almost 1000 people are dying every day in the United States for largely stupid reasons, mainly because there were an utterly shocking amount of people who couldn’t do each other the simple courtesy of wearing a mask over their mouth or believing in the basic tenants of science. The federal response to this pandemic will go down as one of the worst failures of government in the entire history of the republic, but more broadly - it might be safe to say we totally failed each other as a society.

I started work on this record at the very beginning of the California lockdown in late March, 2020 and finished it around August. Each song covers whatever was eating up the news cycle at the time i was working on it, which was like drinking from a fire hose of bad news every single day. During the Trump years, the only thing you could be resolutely assured of is that the worst day was always tomorrow, and by 2020, we were teetering on the verge of collapse.

No one yet knows how this will end. We are about 2 months away from the most important election in the nation’s history. Maybe we will finally begin the long march back to some sense of decency and normality. Maybe we won’t. Suffice to say - people are on edge.

For my own part, making this music was my way of trying not to fall down the well during all of this. These songs are like Polaroid pictures. A snapshot of what it felt like on the inside at the time, at least to me. I am grateful to a great many people who helped make this possible, in
particular Milo and Suzanne, who were surprisingly patient with having nowhere to escape the sound of this being made.

I’ll leave you with the words of the magician Penn Jillette that have been a north star for me for years, and hang just over the monitor in my studio:

“The only secret of magic is that I’m willing
to work harder on it than you think it’s worth.”

Stay safe out there. All we have is each other, and if you keep the right company- that will always be enough.

Buck AE Down
Los Angeles - September 2020

credits

released September 1, 2020

Written, arranged, performed, produced and mastered by
Buck AE Down
at Lanai Soundworks Studios, Pasadena, California during the Covid 19 Pandemic : Spring - Summer 2020

Package design by buckdowndesigns.com

Buck Down proudly uses and endorses Vigier Guitars (www.vigierguitars.com)

Executive Producers: Jim Petersen, Jr., Eros Biox, Paul Schreer, Gold Dust, John Eric Hoffmann and Terry Jacobson

Additional vocals by Mollie Jane Greenspan
Additional guitar on Get it Together by Eli Pafumi
Additional drums on The Cold of Distant Suns by David Raven Additional vocal on Rip City Dub by Roothub

This album was made possible by the generous donations of: Ricardo Aguilera, Talina Melendez, Xifer Fortier, Stephanie Oliveira, Tabitha Hewitt, Russell Biart, Alexandra Jacobs, Jennifer Moore, Dominic Tinio, Kyle Reed, Art Tucker, Rachael Devlin, Matt Shaw, Charlie Dolman, Jonathan Segel, Lindsay Benner, Walter Lautenbach, James Bunkelman, Mark Pankratz, Paul Schreer, Gina N. Ace, Tyler Jachetta, Rand FitzpatrickDylan McNeill, Christopher Cone, Chris Tocchini, Ben Thompson, Michael N Sane, Terry Jacobson.

Merci beaucoup to Patrice Vigier, and the whole Vigier Family for their wonderful instruments and 13 years (!) of support.

Extra special thanks to YOU. For all the little things you do that no one sees. For all that you mean to the people who love you. For all that you’ve done to try and make the world a better place in some small way. You are loved and you are seen. Be kind to yourself, and keep on keeping on. We’re all rooting for you, so never give up on your stupid, stupid dreams.

All songs © & ℗ 2020 All The Way Down Music (ASCAP) except Walls (Circus) by Tom Petty © Warner/Chappell Music, Inc

ADDITIONAL MUSIC, ART, AND WRITING AT WWW.BUCKDOWN.NET

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Buck AE Down Los Angeles, California

Buck AE Down is an artist, writer and producer who lives in Los Angeles and who'd like to be friends with you, if that's cool.

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